House of Commons security guards receive a standing ovation from Members of Parliament. REUTERS/Chris Wattie (CANADA - Tags: POLITICS)

The Parliament of Canada should initiate the most broadly acceptable model of proportional representation (PR) for electing members to our House of Commons, mostly because doing so would create a chamber where MPs are elected in proportion to votes received rather than our present winner-take-all system.

Canada, the U.S. and U.K. are the only major Western democracies still using the first-past-the-post voting system. Our election laws should no longer prescribe that the only voters electing MPs are those favouring each riding's most popular political party. Now the votes of those supporting minority parties — about seven million in the 2011 federal election — achieve nothing in terms of post-election representation. That model was created centuries ago and is simply out-dated for modern times.

Réal Lavergne of the Fair Vote Canada civil society adds:

“Among the world’s 35 strongest democracies, 25 use PR and only six use winner-take-all systems of one sort or another... Comparative

A voter fills in her ballot as she votes in the U.S. midterm elections November 4, 2014. (Reuters)

There is that old maxim, “Where you stand is where you sit.”

And the cry for election “reform” is invariably the province of losers.

Winners are essentially satisfied with the system as it is working for them. Or, if they didn’t win the most recent election, they view the system as sufficiently congenial that they have a reasonable chance of winning. They view the day of electoral defeat as the first day of the march to victory (just as astute victors/parties recognize the day of victory is the first day in the march to defeat). And losers can be sanguine. Democrat Moe Udall was cited after the 2000 election, “the people have spoken; God damn them.”

So despite the undeleted Udall expletive, Democrats were confident they could rebound—as they did in 2008 by electing Barack Obama as president. And, historically, there has been no significant, enduring, modern third party movement, other than ivory tower theorizing about proportional representation.

Members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) honour guard on Feb. 4, 2015. (Reuters)

Washington is betwixt and between when it comes to constructing a strategy for dealing with Beijing.

Over the course of my lifetime, the United States has supported Chinese Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War; fought ‘commies’ in Korea; reached a ‘Nixon goes to China’ rapprochement, playing a ‘China card’ against the Cold War USSR; and watched an incredible Chinese economic surge, making Beijing the manufacturer for the world.

Now Chinese military construction and verbal aggression appear directed at obtaining pre-eminence in East Asia, disconcerting U.S. allies in the region and challenging the United States’ long taken-for-granted hegemony.

The U.S. needs a put-China-back-in-the-box foreign policy approach.

That mentality has resulted in our much-discussed ‘pivot’ on Asia. Unfortunately, it has led us to—if not drowning in Pacific complexities—a pudding without any theme that would equate to coherent, coordinated, allied policy toward dealing with China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) listend during a meeting with Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez.

Diplomats, politicians and business leaders sometimes overlook that China is its peoples, cultures and history far more than its unelected government. The criticisms many of us at home and abroad make are of the party-state governance, not the long-suffering citizens.

Mao remains the overarching governance icon. Jung Chang and Jon Holliday end their biography, Mao, The Unknown Story: “Today (2005), Mao‘s portrait and corpse still dominate Tiananmen Square .... The current Communist regime declares itself to be Mao’s heir and fiercely perpetuates (his) myth.” Many historians today include him with Stalin and Hitler as the three worst mass murderers of the 20th century. Chang-Holliday notes, "...over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule in peacetime."

Many governance problems today stem from the conflation of Mao's totalitarianism and his successor Deng Xiaoping's reforms after 1978 into a system of 'Leninist governance/crony capitalism.' Corruption and violence are so

“… let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan…” … Extract from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 1865.

From these few words have grown the gigantic U.S. veterans’ affairs industry. Veterans’ benefits have become one of the “third rails” of U.S. federal/social spending that is untouchable with expenditures beyond criticism and budgets always rising. But when personnel costs are now over half of the defense budget and veterans pensions/benefits a significant portion of these, enough is enough.

Today’s 21st-century “Total Army” is in no way comparable to the 1960s draftee armed forces and associated military reserves. Today mobilized reservists are expected to have (roughly) comparable competence to active duty forces. And our active duty forces have no match in the armed forces of any other nation.

Members of the Winnipeg Rifles stand at attention at a Remembrance Day service in Winnipeg. (The Canadian Press)

The removal of Julian Fantino as Minister of Veterans Affairs in early 2015 by Prime Minister Harper is one of countless indications that Canadians hold strong views about how our veterans should be treated.

Another is the widespread public opposition to the federal Justice Department spending to date almost $700,000 in legal fees to fight a class action by injured veterans in B.C. seeking lifelong disability payments rather than lump sum settlements. The lump sum approach was an all-party decision under the Martin government that has proven to have disastrous impacts on Canadian soldiers returning from the battlefield. The lifelong monthly payments model should be restored immediately as an option. The crux of the legal case is whether there is a binding social contract on governments for the care of veterans and their families.

Those who serve in our armed forces, who are wounded while in combat or in training for such missions, should be given assistance to return to military

The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris and the subsequent huntdown and elimination of the perpetrators indeed gets attention – especially media attention.

Conservatives are saying the equivalent of “I told you so.” Bluntly, their concerns have proved valid, not racist Islamaphobia.

Liberals are offering dithering equivalents of “Don’t overreact.” And, as always, there is an undertone intimation that Charlie Hebdo was playing Russian-roulette with its satirical-style provocation of Islamic fanatics with its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The same platitudes are burbled: “Islam is a religion of peace”, poverty/social deprivation has caused these attacks; etc.

The world can be proud of France for hosting the largest protest in its history last Sunday for the 17 victims of the Charlie Hebdo and Kosher supermarket massacres. Reportedly, more than 3.7 million people across the country and 1.2-1.6 million in Paris joined the demonstration. Paris was the world’s capital that day.

Marchers, including representatives from 50 nations, came from many parts of France, Europe and beyond. They were not protesting any religion; they were protesting terrorists pretending to be affiliated to a religion. ‘We stand together’ could have been the banner for all, walking arm-in-arm.

The New York Times columnist David Brooks asserts that healthy societies allow “room for those creative and challenging (satirists) who are uninhibited by good manners and taste ... those who are funny, uncivil and offensive … don’t suppress speech, but … grant different standing to different sorts of people ... (S)cholars are heard with high respect. Satirists with bemused

Militant Islamist fighters hold the flag of Islamic State while taking part in a military parade. (Reuters)

The world will feel the impact of four international issues in the coming year:

Oil. The current price war, caused mostly by the Saudi Arabian king’s drive for market share from rising non-traditional producers, has roughly halved the international price of oil from early 2014. Low oil prices will benefit most Canadians, providing vehicle owners and manufacturers with the equivalent of a sizeable tax cut. Our oil and gas sectors, including the oil sands, will suffer in the short run, but some in the industry think both oil and gas do best when international prices are ‘reasonable but stable’.

Consequences of the oil/gas glut and collapsed prices are already emerging. Ironically, while the U.S. hydrocarbon-fracking sector is a major Saudi target, the U.S. is clearly the biggest national winner. The three per cent real U.S. economic growth expected in 2015 should help Canadian exporters significantly. Africa, the Americas, Asia, and most of Europe will also benefit from low prices.

Revelers celebrate during New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square. (Reuters)

Having finished our New Year’s celebrations, we have now soberly taken our first steps into the second half of the second decade of the 21st century.

Many – indeed, most of us – leave 2014 with relief, and view 2015 with trepidation at best.

But that should not deter us. This forthcoming year is replete with positives. While it would not qualify as “the best of times,” all too often we obsess over the capillaries of the leaves on the trees and ignore the forest. Just think for a moment:

We are at peace internationally. We have been noting the centennial of the beginning of World War I, but 100 years ago, we were just entering the meat-grinder of ghastly casualties. And 75 years ago, World War II was beginning to warm up slaughterhouses even more massive than in WWI. And 40 years ago, the United States had just extracted itself from the sanguinary frustration of Vietnam. To be sure, there is fighting in the Middle East, but not on the level of Desert Shield/Storm or Iraqi Freedom.